| This dissertation is an ethnographic account of the making of a contemporary border regime and of its human consequences. In 2004 Poland entered the European Union. It's eastern border was reconstituted into a heavily guarded and technologically sophisticated EU's external boundary. Based on ethnographic field research in Poland and Ukraine in 2005-2006, in border enforcement agencies, civil society organizations and among migrants, I argue that bringing the maintenance of Polish eastern border up to capacity required by the European Union is not merely a technocratic process of upgrading laws and state services. It is rather a complex cultural and technological shift, a discursive adjustment which reinforces the narrative of belonging to Europe through an emphasis on civilizational advancement within a secure, prosperous and bounded space.;The creation of such space relies on developing new sites, categories and protocols for an enhanced management of exclusion. Thus I conceptualize the border as a networked and flexible regime which proliferates the categories and regulations for the sorting out of people, things and territory in Europe today. Within this regime, legality and protection become scarce resources beyond the access of most migrants traversing the margins of Europe. At the same time safe space within secure boundaries is promoted as an unquestioned social good thus supporting a new banality of exclusion. Agents of re-bordering continue to grapple with contradictory imperatives when it comes to reconciling the need to protect the human rights of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and other persons of ambiguous legal status, with exercising sovereignty over territorial borders. The emphasis on surveillance, detention and removal of persons who do not meet the narrow and shifting criteria for admission into the EU undermines such human rights landmarks as the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. This dissertation is an argument for rethinking the EU project of transcending historical divisions and building a continental democracy through the prism of the quotidian functioning of its border regime. |
